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VMware buys Zimbra

As previously rumoured, virtualisation specialist VMware has officially announced that it has acquired open source groupware provider Zimbra from Yahoo. Zimbra, originally acquired by Yahoo in the autumn of 2007, can be used both locally and as a hosted service and serves as the basis for various mail hosts. It is also increasingly being employed as an Exchange alternative in company applications.

Zimbra combines several open source components, such as Apache Lucene, MySQL, OpenLDAP, Postfix and SpamAssassin, with proprietary components such as, for example, Exchange connections. Access is possible from traditional mail clients and via Zimbra’s own AJAX client, which was greatly expanded in version 6.0 released two months ago.

The takeover of Zimbra allows VMware to expand its cloud services. Last summer, the virtualisation specialist had already acquired SpringSource‘s open platform cloud deployments, allowing it to expand its cloud services beyond a virtualisation platform into middleware.

More details about the acquisition can be found on the VMware - Zimbra Questions and Answers page. According to VMware, the acquisition is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2010. The financial terms of the deal, however, have not been disclosed.